A few days after Corpus Don Antolin went one morning in search of
Gabriel. Silver Stick smiled at Luna, speaking to him in a patronising
way.
He had thought of him all night; it pained him to see him idle,
walking about the cloister; it was the want of occupation that
inspired him with such perverse ideas.
"Let us see," he continued, "would it suit you to come down with me
every afternoon into the Cathedral, to show the Treasury and the
other curiosities? A great many foreigners come who can scarcely make
themselves understood when they question me; you will understand them,
as you know French and English, and, your brother says, many other
languages. The Cathedral would be a gainer, as it would show these
strangers that we have an interpreter at our disposal; you would
be doing us a favour and would lose nothing by it. It is always an
amusement to see new faces; and about the recompense ..."
Don Antolin stopped here, scratching his head beneath his skull cap.
He would see what he could screw out of the funds of the Obreria; if
just at first nothing could be managed, as the revenues of the Primacy
were meagre and at their lowest ebb, no doubt something could be given
later on.
He looked anxiously for Gabriel's answer, who, however, was quite
agreeable; when all was said and done he was a guest of the Cathedral
and owed it something. And from that afternoon he went down at the
hour of choir to show the foreigners all the treasures of the church.
There was no lack of travellers who showed Don Antolin's coloured
tickets waiting for the time to see the jewels. Silver Stick could
never see a stranger without imagining that he was a lord or a
duke, and often felt very much surprised at the shabbiness of their
clothing; according to his ideas only the great ones of the earth
could give themselves the pleasure of travelling, and he opened wide
his incredulous and scandalised eyes when Gabriel told him that many
were shoemakers from London or shopkeepers from Paris, who during
their holidays treated themselves to a trip through the ancient
country of the Moors.
Five canons in their choir surplices advanced up the nave, each one
holding a key in his hand; these were the guardians of the treasure.
Each one opened the lock confided to his custody, the door swung
heavily, and the chapel, with its antique treasures, was opened. In
large glass cases, like a museum, was displayed the ancient opulence
of the Cathedral: statues of chiselled silver, large globes crowned
by graceful little figures all of precious metal, ivory caskets of
complicated work, custodias and viriles[1] of gold, enormous gilt
dishes, embossed with mythological subjects reviving the joy of
paganism in that sordid and dusty corner of the Christian Church, and
precious stones spread their varied colours over pectorals, mitres and
mantles for the Virgin. There were diamonds so immense as to make one
doubt their being genuine, emeralds the size of pebbles, amethysts,
topaz, and pearls--very many pearls, strewn by the hundreds and
thousands on the Virgin's garments. The foreigners were amazed at all
this wealth and dazzled by the quantity, while Gabriel, who had become
accustomed to see it daily, looked at it carelessly. The Treasury
presented a deplorable spectacle of neglect: the riches had aged with
the Cathedral, the diamonds did not flash, the gold seemed tarnished
and dusty, the silver was blackened, the pearls were opaque and sick,
the smoke from the wax tapers and the damp atmosphere of the church
had sadly dulled everything.
[Footnote 1: _Virile_--small box with double glass in which the Host
is exhibited.]
"The Church," said Gabriel to himself, "ages everything she touches.
The treasures lose their brilliancy in her hands, like jewels that
fall into the power of usurers. The diamond becomes dulled in the
bosom of the great miser, and the most beautiful picture becomes
blackened on her altars."
After the visit to the Treasury came the exhibition of the Ochavo, the
octagonal chapel of dark marbles, that pantheon of relics where
the most repulsive human remains--skulls with their ghastly grin,
mummified arms and worn-eaten vertebras--were shown in gold or silver
shrines. The gross and credulous piety of former days displayed
itself in the full tide of unbelief, so that even Don Antolin, so
uncompromising when he spoke of the glories of his Cathedral, lowered
his voice and hurried over his explanations as he showed a piece
of the mantle worn by Santa Leocadia when she "appeared" to the
Archbishop of Toledo, quite understanding the difficulty of explaining
how an apparition could wear garments of stuff.
Gabriel translated faithfully Don Antolin's explanation, repeating
it again and again with imperturbable gravity, while the canons who
escorted the batch of strangers drew a few paces away with an absent
look, to avoid questions.
One day a phlegmatic Englishman interrupted the interpreter.
"And have you not amongst all these things a feather from the wings of
St. Michael?"
"No, señor, and it is a great pity," said Luna, equally seriously,
"but you will probably find it in some other Cathedral; we cannot have
everything here."
In the Chapter-house, a mixture of Arab and Gothic architecture, the
foreigners were much interested by the double row of portraits of the
Toledan archbishops hanging on the wall, with their mitres and golden
croziers. Gabriel called their attention to the picture of Don
Cerebruno, a mediaeval prelate, so called from his enormous head; but
it was the wardrobe which more especially surprised the foreigners.
It was a room surrounded by large cupboards and shelves of old wood;
above these the walls were covered with dusty and torn pictures,
copies of Flemish paintings that the canons had relegated to this
corner; round the room were placed in line the ancient armchairs of
the church, some of Spanish workmanship, austere, with straight lines
and ravelled coverings, others of Greek design with curved feet
inlaid with ivory. The capes and chasubles were piled on the shelves,
according to colours, with the collars outside the heap, so that
people could examine the wonderful embroidery. A whole world of
patterns appeared with every possible brilliancy of colour on a few
inches of stuff. The astonishing art of the ancient embroiderers made
the silk a series of vivid pictures; the collar and the narrow stripes
on the front of a cape were large enough to reproduce all the scenes
of the biblical creation and the passion of Jesus. Brocade and silk
unrolled the magnificence of their textures. One cape was a garden
of flame-coloured carnations, another was a bed of roses and other
fantastic flowers with twisted stamens and metallic petals. The
sacristans produced from the deep shelves, as though they were books,
the splendid and famous frontals of the high altar. There were special
ones for each festival; that for St. John's Day was brightly coloured
with verbenas, purple bunches of grapes, and golden lambs that fat
little angels were caressing with their chubby hands. The most
ancient, of soft and rather faded colours, showed Persian gardens with
blue waters in which fabulous reddish beasts were drinking.
The visitors were bewildered seeing all this vast collection of
stuffs and embroideries unrolled piece after piece--all the past of
a Cathedral which, having millions of revenue, employed for its
embellishment armies of embroiderers, acquiring the richest textures
of Valencia and Seville, reproducing in gold and colours all the
episodes from the Holy books, and the torments of the martyrs, all the
glorious legends of the Church, immortalised by the needle, before
printing had been able to do so.
Gabriel returned every evening to the upper cloister, wearied out with
walking the length and breadth of the Cathedral. During the first few
days he was delighted with the novelty of seeing fresh faces, to hear
the rustle of the visitors who, branching off from the great stream of
travellers who inundated Europe, came as far as Toledo. But after a
little while the people he saw every afternoon seemed to him just the
same. There were the same questions, the same stiff and hard-featured
Englishwomen, and the same o-o-o-h's of cold and conventional
admiration, and the same identical way of turning their backs with
rude pride when there was nothing else to be shown. Returning to
the quiet of the upper cloister after the daily exhibition of the
Treasury, Gabriel thought the poverty of the Claverias even more
revolting and intolerable. The shoemaker seemed sadder and yellower in
the rank atmosphere of his den, bending over his bench hammering the
soles, his wife more feeble and ill, the miserable slave of maternity,
weakened by hunger, and offering to her little son as his only hope of
food those flaccid breasts in which there was nothing left but a drop
of blood. The little child was dying! Sagrario, who had left her
machine to spend the greater part of the day in the shoemaker's room
said so in a low voice to her uncle. She did all the work of the
house, while the poor mother, motionless in a chair, with the little
one in her lap, looked at it with weeping eyes. When the baby woke
from its stupor it would wearily raise its head from its little neck,
which had become a mere thread; the mother to stifle its feeble moans
would press it to her breast, but the child would turn away its mouth
guessing the inutility of expending its strength on that rag of flesh
from which it could only succeed in extracting the last drop.
Gabriel examined the child, noting its extreme emaciation and the
spots that scrofula had spread over its straw-coloured skin. He shook
his head incredulously when the neighbours who had gathered round the
invalid each diagnosed some particular ailment, and recommended every
imaginable sort of household remedy, from decoctions of rare herbs and
stinking ointments to applications on the chest of miracle working
prints, and tracing seven crosses on the navel with as many
paternosters.
"It is hunger," said Luna to his niece, "nothing but hunger." And
depriving himself of part of his own food, he sent to the shoemaker's
house the milk that had been brought up for himself. But the child's
stomach could not retain the liquid too substantial for its weakness,
and threw it up as soon as swallowed. The Aunt Tomasa, with her
energetic and enterprising character, brought a woman from outside the
Cathedral to nourish the child, but after two days, and before the
effects became visible, she came no more, as if she had felt disgusted
at the miserable and corpse-like little body touching her. In vain the
gardener's widow searched; it was not easy to find generous breasts
who would give their milk for very little pay.
In the meanwhile the child was dying. All the women came in and out of
the shoemaker's house, and even Don Antolin would stand at the door in
the mornings.
"How is the little one? Just the same? It is all in God's hands."
And he would retire, doing the shoemaker the great charity of not
speaking to him about the pesetas he owed him, on account of the sick
child.
"Virgin's Blue" was annoyed by this incident, which upset the calm of
the cloister, and disturbed the bliss of his digestion as a happy and
well-fed servant of the Church. It was a shame that that shoemaker
should be allowed to live in the Claverias with all that flock of
wretched and scurvy children; one would die every month; all sorts
of illness would lay hold on them. By what right were they in the
Cathedral when they drew no wage from the Obreria? Such stinking
excrescences ought to remain outside the Lord's house.
His mother-in-law was furious.
"Silence, you thief of the saints!" she cried. "Silence, or I will
throw a dish at you! We are all sons of God, and if things were as
they should be, all the poor ought to live in the Cathedral. Instead
of saying such things it would be much better if you gave those
unhappy people part of what you have stolen from the Virgin."
The sacristan shrugged his shoulders with contempt. If they had not
enough to eat they should not have children. There he was himself with
only one daughter--he did not think he had any right to more--and so
thanks to Our Lady he was able to save a scrap for his old age.
Tomasa spoke of the shoemaker's child to the good gentlemen of the
Chapter when they came into the garden for a few minutes after choir.
They listened absently, putting their hands in their cassocks.
"It is all God's will! What poverty!"
And some gave her ten centimes, others a real, one or two even a
peseta. The old woman went one day to the Archbishop's palace. Don
Sebastian was engaged and unable to see her, but he sent her two
pesetas by one of the servants.
"They don't mean badly," said the gardener's widow, giving her
collection to the poor mother, "but each one lives for himself, and
his neighbour may manage as he can. No one divides his cloak with
another--take this, and see how you can get out of your trouble."
They fed a little better in the shoemaker's house; the miserable
scrofulous children collected in the cloister profited most by the
baby's illness; it was growing daily weaker, lying motionless for
hours, with almost imperceptible breathing, on its mother's lap.
When the unhappy child died, all the people of the Claverias rushed
to the home. Inside could be heard the mother's wailings, strident,
interminable, like the bellowing of a wounded beast; outside the
father wept silently, surrounded by his friends.
"It died just like a bird," he said with long pauses, his words broken
by sobs. "His mother held him on her knees--I was working--'Antonio,
Antonio!' she called, 'see, what is the matter with the child, it is
moving its mouth and making grimaces?' I ran up quickly, its face
was quite dusky--as if it had a veil over it. It opened its mouth, a
couple of twitches with its eyes staring, and its neck fell over--just
the same as a bird, just the same."
He wept, repeating constantly the resemblance between his son and
those birds who die in winter from the cold.
The bell-ringer looked gloomily at Gabriel.
"You who know everything, is it true that it died of hunger?"
And the Tato with his scandalous impetuosity shouted loudly--
"There is no justice in the world! All this must be altered! Fancy a
child dying of hunger in this house, where money runs like water, and
where all those creatures are dressed in gold!"
When the little corpse was carried to the cemetery, the cloister
seemed quite deserted; all its life was concentrated in the
shoemaker's house, all the women surrounded the mother. Despair had
rendered that sick and feeble woman furious. She no longer wept: her
child's death had made her ferocious--she wished to bite or to dash
her skull against the wall.
"Ay! my s-o-o-o-n! my Antonio!"
At night Sagrario and the other women remained in the house to look
after her. In her desperation she wished to make some one responsible
for her misfortune, and she fixed on those highest in the cloister.
Don Antolin had not helped her with the smallest alms; his affected
niece had scarcely been in to see the little one, nothing interested
her but men.
"It is all Silver Stick's fault," wailed the poor mother--"he is
a thief. He grinds our poverty with his usurer's snares. Never a
farthing did he give for my son. And that Mariquita is just the same.
Yes, señor, I do say so. She only thinks of decking herself out so
that the cadets may see her."
"For mercy's sake, woman, they will hear you," begged some of the
terrified women.
But others scouted this fear. "Let Don Antolin and his niece hear
them! What did it matter? The Claverias were tired of the rapacity
of the uncle, and the magnificent airs that ugly woman gave herself!
Because they were poor they were not going to spend their lives
trembling before that couple. God only knew what the uncle and niece
did when they were alone in the house together!"
A breath of rebellion had passed over that sleepy world. It was the
unconscious influence of Gabriel. What he had said to his friends had
been passed on to all the men in the Claverias, getting even to the
women. They were confused and garbled ideas, that very few could
understand, but they cherished them like fresh pure air reviving
their minds. They sounded in their ears like a pleasant echo from the
outside world. It was sufficient for them to know that this quiet life
of submission they had led up to now was not immutable--they had
a right to something better--and that human beings ought to rebel
against injustice and oppression.
Don Antolin, who knew well enough the crew confided to his care,
was not long in perceiving this moral upturn. He felt hostility and
rebellion on every side. The debtors answered him haughtily, alleging
their poverty as a reason for no longer enduring his avarice; his
imperious orders were tardily executed, and he had a clear perception
that they were laughing behind his back as he walked through the
cloister, and making threatening gestures. One day his legs trembled
beneath him and his eyes were dimmed, hearing how the Perrero replied
to one of his reprimands, having returned late to the Cathedral, and
obliging him to descend and open the door after he had gone to bed.
The Tato made him understand, with an insolent expression, that he had
bought a knife, and that he intended its first fleshing to be in the
bowels of some priest or other who ground down the poor.
His niece complained to Don Antolin, they paid no attention to her and
flouted her, no woman now ever came to help her gratuitously in her
household duties. They replied insolently that those who wanted
servants must pay for them. What was her uncle thinking about? It was
certainly time to assert his authority and to lay a heavy hand on
these people.
She herself, so lively and energetic in her own house, was now obliged
to retire snorting with rage or weeping, whenever she stationed
herself at her door. All the women of the Claverias wished to revenge
themselves for their former thraldom, standing already on the
declivity of disrespect.
"Look at her!" screamed the shoemaker's wife to her neighbours,
"always so dressed up, the ugly jade. She decks herself with the blood
that vampire of an uncle sucks from the poor."
And from the iron gratings of the upper Claverias, giving on the
roofs, there was generally a voice singing the ancient couplet, no
doubt inspired by the Cathedral garden--
"Las amas de los curas y los laureles
Como nunca dan fruto siempre estan verdes." [1]
[Footnote 1: Priest's housekeepers--like laurels--never have any
fruit, because they are evergreens.]
It was this that ended the patience of Don Antolin; this insulting
conjecture about himself and his niece that disturbed his miserly
chastity. He visited the cardinal to complain of the inhabitants of
the cloister, but His Eminence, who lived in a perpetual rage, grew
furious listening to him and very nearly thrashed him. Why did he
come to him with such tales? For what reason had he been given any
authority? Was there nothing left of a man beneath his cassock? He who
was wanting in the good discipline of the house--turn him out into the
street at once! More energy, and be careful never to trouble him again
with such insignificant tales, otherwise the person who would be
turned into the street would be Silver Stick himself.
Don Antolin felt a little braver after this interview, although he
swore mentally never again to visit that terrible prelate. He was
determined to reassert his authority, by punishing the weakest, whom
he considered as the origin of all these scandals. The shoemaker
should be expelled from the Claverias, as he was there through
no other right but that his wife had been born there. Mariquita,
bewildered by her uncle's energy, must needs speak to some one about
these intentions, and so the news circulated through the cloister.
Don Antolin did not dare to move a step further, terrified by the
silent unanimity with which the whole population rose against him.
The Tato looked at him with mocking and threatening eyes, in which
Silver Stick could plainly read "Remember the knife"; but what
terrified Don Antolin more than anything was the silence of the
bell-ringer, and the savage and hostile glance with which he responded
to his words.
Even the good Wooden Staff, Esteban, protested in his own way, saying
quietly to Don Antolin:
"Is it really true that you intend turning out the shoemaker? You will
do wrong, very wrong, for after all he is very poor, and his wife was
born in the cloister. These innovations always bring misfortune, Don
Antolin."
So the priest, finding he had no support, and seeing hostility on
every side, put off his energetic resolutions till the following day,
even reproving his niece when she threw his weakness in his face.
The Canon Obrero, from whom he had implored help, did not care to
disturb the blessed peace of his existence by mixing himself up in the
quarrels of the smaller people. It was Silver Stick's own affair; he
could punish or expel any one he thought fit without fear of anybody.
But Don Antolin, dreading the responsibility that might accrue from
energetic action, ended by delivering himself over to Gabriel and
begging for his assistance. That man was the one who wielded the real
authority in the upper cloister; all those who had listened to him
followed his advice blindly.
"Help me, Gabrielillo," said the priest with an agonised expression.
"If you cannot restore order, this will end badly; they even insult my
poor niece, and some day I shall turn half the people of the Claverias
out into the street, as I hold authority from His Eminence for
everything. Ay, señor! I do not know what has happened here; surely
the devil must have got loose in our upper cloister! How these people
have changed to me!"
Luna guessed Don Antolin's thoughts and his allusions to the devil who
had got loose in the cloister. That devil was himself. No doubt Silver
Stick was right. Without intending it he had introduced discord into
the Cathedral. He had sought calm and forgetfulness in that refuge,
and the spirit of rebellion had followed him even into this
concealment. He recalled his thoughts on the first day, when he was
alone in the silent cloister; he wished to be another stone in the
Cathedral, without thought, without feeling, to spend the rest of his
life fixed to that ruin, with the embryonic life of the fungus on the
buttress, but the spirit of the outside world had entered in with him.
Luna remembered how travellers in time of plague had crossed the
sanitary cordon--they were well and happy, nothing betrayed the
infection in their bodies; but the poisonous germs travelled in the
folds of their clothes and in their hair, carrying death without
knowing it, helping it to leap all barriers and obstacles, without
being in the least aware of it. He was the same, but instead of
spreading death, he spread tumultuous and rebellious life. The protest
of the lower orders that had been surging throughout the world, for
more than a century, had entered with him into this still remaining
fragment of the sixteenth century. He had awakened those men, who had
been like the sleepers in the legend, motionless in their cave for
ages, while the centuries rolled on and the world was transformed.
The awakening of these people was sudden and violent, like that of a
people in revolution. They were ashamed of the old errors that they
had worshipped, and this made them receive as gospel everything that
was new, without quailing before the consequences.
It was the faith of a people which, once it takes form, rushes
onwards, accepting everything, justifying everything, the only
requirement being its novelty, and casting aside contemptuously those
traditional principles which it had just abandoned.
The cowardly submission of Silver Stick was the first victory of those
more daring souls who formed Luna's surrounding. The avaricious and
despotic priest lowered his eyes before them, smilingly anxious to
make himself agreeable. This they owed to the master, for he was now
the true ruler of the upper cloister. Don Antolin consulted him before
making any arrangements, and his ugly niece smiled on Gabriel as the
daughters of the conquered might smile on a triumphant hero.
They now no longer hid themselves in the bell-ringer's house for their
meetings; they formed a circle in the cloister during the evenings,
discussing the audacious doctrines taught by Luna, without now being
intimidated by the religious atmosphere. They sat with the look of
lords, surrounding their master, while in the opposite gallery walked
Silver Stick like a black phantom, reading his book of hours, and
casting now and then an uneasy glance on the group. Even his ancient
vassal, the chaplain of the nuns, had dared to leave him to go and
listen to Gabriel.
Don Antolin with the keenness of his ecclesiastical training, guessed
the intensity of the evil produced by Luna. But for the moment his
egoism was stronger than his reflection. Let them talk--what did it
matter? It was only a little ebullition of pride in those people,
nothing more. All words and wind in the head. Meanwhile they had
better not ask for any more money! In exchange he had a very good
auxiliary in Luna, who, sharing his authority, spared him many
annoyances, and the Cathedral disposed of his services gratuitously as
interpreter to the foreigners.
These already began to talk of the great intelligence and education
of the Toledan sacristans, a praise Don Antolin received as though it
were entirely deserved by himself.
Gabriel was far more alarmed than Don Antolin at the effect of his
words; he bitterly repented having been led to speak of his past and
of his ideals. He had sought for peace and silence, but he was
still surrounded, though in a smaller degree, by the atmosphere of
proselytism and blind enthusiasm, as in the days of his martyrdom.
He had wished to efface himself and to disappear on entering the
Cathedral, but fate mocked him, reviving the agitation in the midst
of his concealment, to disturb the peace of that ruin. Society had
forgotten him, but he unconsciously was agitating, and drawing to
himself the attention of the outside world.
The enthusiasm of these neophytes was a danger, and his brother, the
Wooden Staff, without understanding the full extent of the evil,
warned him with his usual good sense.
"You are turning the heads of these poor men, with the things you
tell them. Be careful; they are very well meaning, but they are very
ignorant. And having been ignorant all their lives, it is dangerous to
turn such men into sages at one blow. It is as if I, being accustomed
to the homely stew, were taken to-day to His Eminence's table. I
should gorge myself and drink too much; at night I should have a
colic, and should probably hop the twig."
Gabriel acknowledged the truth of this prudent advice, but he could
not draw back--he was driven on by the affection of his disciples and
his own ardour as propagandist. It was a great delight to him to see
the wonder in those virgin minds, entering tumultuously into the
luminous palaces constructed by human thought during the last century.
The description of the future of humanity inflamed all Luna's ardour.
He spoke of the happiness of men, after a revolutionary crisis which
would change all the organisation of humanity with mystic rapture,
like a Christian preacher describing heaven.
"Man ought to seek happiness solely in this world, for after death
there only existed the infinite life of matter with its endless
combinations, but the human being was effaced as entirely as a plant
or an animal--he fell into oblivion when he sank into the tomb.
Immortality of the soul was one of the illusions of human pride worked
up by religions, who laid their foundations on this lie. It was
only in this life that man could find heaven. Everyone embarked on
immensity in the same ship, the earth. We were all comrades in our
dangers and our struggles, and we ought to look upon one another
as brothers seeking the common welfare. And what about the unequal
distribution of goods, the division of classes, the ability to work,
and, above all, the struggle for existence, that the philosophers and
poets of the oppressing classes paint as an indispensable condition of
progress? Communism is the holiest aspiration of humanity, the
divine dream of man since he began to think in the first dawn of
civilisation. Religions had endeavoured to establish it, but religion
had been shipwrecked and was moribund, and only science could enforce
it in the future. They must stop on the way they were going, as
humanity was marching on the road to perdition, therefore it was
necessary to return to the point of departure. The first man who had
cultivated a portion of the earth and garnered the fruits of his
toil, thought it was his for ever, and left it to his sons as their
property; they engaged other men to cultivate it for them--so these
men became robbers, appropriators of the universal heritage. It was
the same with those who possessed themselves of the invention of
human genius, machines, etc., for the benefit of a small majority,
subjecting the rest of mankind to the law of hunger. No, everything
was for everyone. The earth belonged to all human beings without
exception, like the sun and the air; its products ought to be divided
between everyone with due regard to their necessities. It was shameful
that man, who only appeared for an instant on this planet--a minute,
a second, for his life was no more than this in the life of
immensity--should spend this mere breath of existence fighting with
his kin, robbing them, excited by the fever of plunder, not even
enjoying the majestic calm of a wild beast, which when it has eaten,
rests, without ever thinking of doing harm from vanity or avarice.
There ought to be neither rich nor poor--nothing but men. The only
inevitable division must be that between brains more or less highly
organised. But the wise, from the fact of being so, ought to show
their greatness, sacrificing themselves for the more simple, without
seeking to assist the greatness of their minds by material advantages;
for in stomachs there were no categories or ranks. Everything that
exists, even the smallest production that man considers his exclusive
work, is the work of the past and present generations. By what right
can anyone say 'This is mine, mine only'? Man is not consulted before
he is formed if he wishes to burst forth into life. He is born--and
from the fact of being born he has a right to well-being." Gabriel
proclaimed his supreme formula, "Everything for everyone, and
well-being for all."
His friends listened in profound silence. The right to well-being
sank profoundly into their minds; it was the saying that most cruelly
touched their poverty, taunted by the contrast of the wealth of the
Church.
Don Martin, the young chaplain, was the only one who timidly raised
any objections to the master's sayings. He wished to know if, when
everything was for everyone, when man should have recognised his
right to happiness, without laws or compulsion to force him to
production--would he work? seeing that work was a necessity, and not a
virtue, as those who employ labour say, to glorify it.
Gabriel loudly affirmed the necessity of work in the future. The
man of the future would work without being forced to do so by his
necessities; he would not be ruled by the body and its imperious
requirements; his conscience would be inspired with the clear
understanding of solidarity with his fellows and the certainty that
if one abandoned social duties others would follow the example, thus
rendering life in common impossible and so returning to the actual
times of poverty and robbery.
"Why do not the few men of culture and sound conscience living at
present kill and rob?" exclaimed Gabriel. "It is not through fear of
the law and its representatives, for a clear intelligence, if it takes
the trouble, can easily find ways of evading both; neither can it be
through fear of eternal penalties and divine punishment, as such
men do not believe in these inventions of the past. It is from that
respect to his fellows which is felt by every elevated mind, from the
consideration that all violence should be avoided, for if everyone
gave themselves over to it, all social life must disappear. When this
understanding, which now only belongs to a few, embraces all humanity,
men will live ruled by their own consciences without laws or police,
working from social duty, without requiring man to be the only spring
of activity, and sweating without compassion to be the only way to
ease."
Throughout all his revolutionary raptures Luna had no illusions as to
the present. Humanity was at present an infected land, in which the
best seeds rotted, or which at best produced only poisonous fruits; we
must wait till the equalising revolution begun in the human conscience
a century ago should be completed, after that it would be possible
and easy to change the basis of society; he had a blind faith in
the future. Man must progress in the same way as communities; these
reckoned their evolutions by centuries, but man by millions of
years. How could a man of to-day be compared to the biped animal of
prehistoric times, though bearing visibly the traces of the animalism
from which he had lately emerged? Living in fellowship with his
ancestors the monkeys, the principal difference being the first
babblings of speech, and the first trembling spark that began to burn
in his brain.
From the ravenous beast of former days, suffering from all the cruel
forces of nature and living in fraternal misery with the lower
animals, the man of to-day was evolved, asserting his superiority to
his ancestors, dominating all nature. From the men of to-day, in whom
the passions of their former animalism are finding their equilibrium
with the gradual unfolding of the mind, will arise that superior and
perfect being indicated by philosophers, pure from all animal egoism,
and endeavouring to change the actual cruel, restless, and uncertain
life, into a period of happy and prosperous equality.
The animalism at present dominant in man exasperated Gabriel; it was
the great stumbling-block to all his generous views of the future,
and he explained to his astonished listeners the transformations of
natural creatures and of the origin of man, and the wondrous poem of
the evolution of nature from the original protoplasm to the infinite
varieties of life. We still carry in us the marks of our origin. One
could not help laughing at the God of the Jews, who had modelled a man
from clay, like a sculptor. Unlucky artist! Science pointed out much
carelessness and bungling in His work, without being able to justify
such mistakes. The skin of our bodies did not serve us as a covering
like the fur of an animal. How could we then believe it? Why were
nipples given to human males, if they were of no use for milk giving?
Why was the vertebral column at the back of the body as in quadrupeds,
when it would have been more logical, in creating a man who stands on
his feet, to place it in the centre of the body as a strong support,
thus avoiding the curvatures and weakness of the spine that are now
suffered by this disequilibrium in the support of its weight?
Gabriel enumerated the various inexplicable inconsistencies and
incongruities found in the human body, presuming it to be of divine
origin.
"I feel prouder," said he, "of my animal origin; to be a lineal
descendant of inferior beings than to have emerged imperfect from the
hand of a stupid God. I feel the same satisfaction that a nobleman
feels in speaking of his ancestors when I think of our remote
forefathers, those men-beasts, exposed like the animals to all the
cruel severity of nature, who, little by little, through hundreds of
centuries, have transformed themselves, triumphing in the unfolding of
their minds, their brains, and their social instincts. Making clothes,
edible foods, arms, tools and houses, neutralising the exterior
influences of nature. What hero or discoverer in the four thousand
years comprising our history can compare with those elementary men who
have slowly evolved and maintained on the earth the existence of our
species, exposed thousands of times to annihilation. The day on which
our ancestors cared for the sick and wounded, instead of abandoning
them as all animals had previously done; on which the first seed was
planted, the first arrow shot, brought nature face to face with the
greatest of her revolutions. Only one in the future will be able to
equal it; if man in remote times was able to free his body, now he
requires the great revolution to free his mind. The races who go
furthest in their intellectual development will be the ultimate
survivors; they will be masters of the earth, destroying all others.
The least wise in those days will probably be far superior to the most
cultivated intellects of the present times. Each individual will find
his happiness in the happiness of his fellows, and no one will try to
exercise compulsion on his neighbour. No laws or penalties will exist,
and voluntary associations will supply through the influence of reason
the present power of authority. This will be in the future--far, very
far off. But what do centuries matter in the life of humanity! They
are like seconds in our existence. On the day when man shall be
transformed into this superior being, with the full development of
all his intellectual faculties, now so embryonic, this earth will no
longer be the vale of tears spoken of by religion, but the paradise
dreamed of by the poets."
In spite of the enthusiasm with which Gabriel spoke, his hearers did
not appear to share these illusions. They were silent, and their
attitude was one of coldness before the immense distance of that
future to which their master confided all his hopes of universal
prosperity. They wished for it at once, with the eagerness of a child
who is shown a dainty which is afterwards put out of its reach. The
sacrifices, the slow work for the future, struck no chord in their
minds. From Gabriel's explanations they only drew the fact that they
were unhappy, but that they had the same right to happiness and
comfort as those privileged few whom they had formerly respected in
their ignorance. As a certain portion of human felicity belonged to
them they wished to possess it at once, without delay or resistance,
with all the fervour of one claiming what belongs to him. Luna
remarked in this silence a certain rebellion, like those ironical
gestures with which his companions in Barcelona had received his
illusions about the future and his anathemas against violence of
action.
These ardent neophytes outdistanced their teacher; they listened to
him with respect, but they were obliged to isolate themselves from him
in order to digest his teachings in their own fashion. Don Martin was
the only one who followed him in his visionary excursions into the
future. The bell-ringer, the organ-blower, the shoemaker and the Tato
now went up nightly to the bell-ringer's house, without summoning
the master, and there they gave vent to their hatred of everything
existing, under the forgotten old prints, yellow and wrinkled, which
pictured the inglorious episodes of the Carlist war.
This nocturnal reunion was a continual complaint against social
injustice. They thought themselves even more unfortunate when they
took an exact review of their situation. The shoemaker recalled with
tearful eyes the little child who had died of hunger, and spoke of the
misery of his offspring, so numerous as to render his work useless.
The organ-blower spoke of his miserable old age, the six reals daily
during his life, without any hope of earning more. The Tato, in the
fits of rage of a bullying coxcomb, proposed to behead all the canons
in the choir some evening and then to set fire to the Cathedral. And
the bell-ringer, gloomy and scowling, said aloud, following up the
course of his thoughts:
"And below so much wealth that is of no use to anybody--amassed from
pure pride--thieves! robbers!"
Gabriel returned to pass his days by Sagrario's side. His disciples
hid themselves daily more carefully in their isolation in the tower.
Don Martin had his mother ill, and could not leave the convent.
Silver Stick felt quite satisfied with Luna seeing him alone,
believing that it was he who had alienated his disciples, cutting
short in this way his dangerous conversations so as to restore order
in the cloister. One day he addressed him smilingly with a patronising
manner.
"You will be rewarded for your good conduct, Gabrielillo, much sooner
than you expect. Did I not say I would look out for something for you
in exchange for the help you gave me in showing the treasury? Well,
now you have it. From next week two pesetas daily will fall into
your purse like two suns. Are you equal to staying all night in the
Cathedral? The older watchman, the one who was a civil guard, is tired
of it, and is going home to his own village. It appears that since his
dog died he has taken a dislike to the duties. The other watchman is
very poorly and wants a companion. Will you undertake it? If it were
winter I should not say anything about it, as you cough too much to
spend the night down there; but in summer the Cathedral is the coolest
place in Toledo. What lovely nights! And by the time bad weather comes
on we will have found you some better place. You are trustworthy,
though your head is rather light; but you come of an honoured and
well-known family, which is what is wanted. Do you accept?"
Luna accepted, declaring his intention to Esteban, when the latter
objected on account of his weak health. He would only undertake the
watchman's duties during the summer; besides, two pesetas a day were
even more than Wooden Staff earned; the income of the family would be
doubled, and it would be a pity to lose such a good opportunity.
That evening Sagrario spoke to her uncle praising the energy which
prompted him to undertake any sort of work so as not to be a charge on
the family.
They were in the cloister leaning on the balustrade; below was the
dark garden with its waving branches, above a summer sky veiled by the
heat haze which dulled the brightness of the stars. They were alone
in the four-sided gallery. The lighted windows of the Chapel-master's
little room threw a square of red on the opposite roofs. They could
hear the harmonium playing slowly and sadly, and when it stopped the
shadow of the musician passed and repassed over the square of light
with his nervous gestures, which, enlarged by the reflection, appeared
the most grotesque contortions.
The nocturnal calm and darkness surrounded Gabriel and Sagrario with a
gentle caress; that mysterious freshness was falling from above which
seems to revive drooping spirits and magnify old remembrances. The
Church seemed to them as an immense sleeping beast, in whose lap they
had found peace and protection.
Gabriel spoke of his past, in order to convince the young woman that
his work in the Cathedral would not be very arduous. He had suffered
much; there was no bitterness that he had not tasted; he had endured
hunger, terrible hunger, in his peregrinations through the world.
He did not know which were the most painful, his martyrdom in the
dungeons of the gloomy castle, or his days of despair in the streets
of crowded cities, seeing food and gold through the glass windows of
the shops while his head was swimming with the dizziness of hunger.
He could endure his misery while he wandered alone through the cruel
selfishness of civilisation; but the most horrible days were those
in which he shared his vagabond poverty with Lucy, his gentle and
melancholy companion.
Gabriel spoke of the Englishwoman as of a dead sister.
"Had you known her, Sagrario, you would have loved her. She was a
strong woman, a brave companion, united to me more by the community of
thought than by carnal attraction. I loved her when I first saw her.
I hardly know if it was love that we felt; poets have written so many
lies about love, and have falsified it in such an exaggerated way,
that I do not for certain know what it is."
He spoke to the young woman of love, explaining it according to his
beliefs. Goethe had defined it as an "elective affinity," speaking
as a man of science and not as a poet, using the term that chemistry
gives to the tendency of two substances to unite and form a distinct
product. Two beings between whom no affinity existed could meet
through false laws of life in perpetual contact, but they could not
mix or merge into one another. This happened more often than not
between the individuals of different sexes who peopled the earth; a
passing sentimentality could exist, or carnal caprice, but seldom
love. The poor invalid Lucy was his affinity; they met and they loved.
In their pity for human miseries, their hatred of inequalities and
injustice, their self-abnegation in the cause of the humble and
unfortunate they were equal; they were not only united by their hearts
but by their brains.
She was plain, with a soft and sad plainness that seemed to Luna the
supreme ideal of beauty in the midst of that struggling world of
unfortunates and victims. She was the image of a woman of the people
reared in the workmen's slums of great cities, anaemic from the
mephitic air of the den in which she was born and from bad and
insufficient food, with a wretched body, all feminine graces paralysed
in their development by the rough work done in her childhood. Her
lips, that great ladies paint red, were violet; the only beauty of her
face lay in her eyes, those windows of sorrow, made larger by the cold
nights passed in the street from horror of the scenes she saw in her
childhood; her father, drunken, with the brutal wish of a workman to
forget, who, after imagining that his tavern was a paradise, would
become infuriated with the poverty of his home and beat the whole
family.
"She was like all you women of the lower orders, Sagrario. Your beauty
only lasts an instant; in fact, it can only exist in the first flush
of youth. A woman of the poor cannot be beautiful unless she gets
out of her class. Daily labour makes her lose all her freshness and
strength, and maternity in the midst of poverty absorbs even the
marrow in her bones. When her daily work is ended and she returns
home, she has to sweep and wash, and shrivel herself to a mummy before
the smoky kitchen stove. I loved Lucy for that reason, because she was
consumed and drained by sweating, because she was the girl worker
in all her melancholy decadence, born beautiful and made hideous by
social injustice."
He recalled the unbending and deadly hatred with which that little
woman spoke so quietly of the supreme vengeance of the fallen, of the
revenge for long years of oppression. She showed herself more firmly
rooted and fiercer in her illusions than Gabriel, and he would praise
her daring as a propagandist, her perilous expeditions into the great
towns, running the gauntlet of watchful police, carrying on her arm
that old bonnet-box full of pamphlets that might have sent her to
prison. She was the "miss" animated by evangelical propaganda, who
travels over the globe distributing Bibles with a cold smile, fearless
alike of the mockery of civilisation, or the brutality of savages; but
what Lucy distributed were incitements to revolution; she did not seek
out the happy but the despairing, in the factories and infected
slums. The two endured hunger, finding themselves often separated by
persecution and prison, but they met again, continuing their romantic
career, till poverty and consumption ended her life.
Gabriel wept, remembering their last interview in an Italian hospital,
clean and sweet, but with the frozen atmosphere of charity. As he was
not her husband he could only visit her twice a week. He presented,
himself ragged and downcast, seeing her in an armchair daily paler
and weaker, her skin of a waxen transparency and her eyes immensely
enlarged. He knew a little about everything, and he could not conceal
from himself the gravity of her illness. She waited quietly for death.
"Bring me some roses," she said, smiling to Gabriel, as if in the last
moment of her life she wished to acknowledge the natural beauty of the
world made hideous and darkened by man. The "companion" lived on dry
bread, refusing the help of his comrades only a little less poor than
himself, sleeping on the ground, in order to take her on his next
visit a bunch of flowers.
"She died, Sagrario," groaned Luna, "and I know not where they buried
her; possibly she may have served for a lecture at the school of
anatomy; she fell into the common grave like those soldiers whose
heroism remains in obscurity. But I still see her; she has followed me
in all my misfortunes, and I think she lives again in you."
"But uncle," said Sagrario, gently, touched by his recital, "I cannot
do what she did. I am an unhappy woman, without strength or will."
"Call me Gabriel," said Luna, vehemently. "You are my Lucy, who again
crosses my path; I knew it from the first, and for a long while I have
been searching my feelings, analysing my will, and I have arrived at
one certainty--that I love you, Sagrario."
The young woman made a gesture of surprise, drawing further from him.
"Do not draw away, do not fear me. I am a feeble man, you are a weak
woman; you have suffered much, and have bid good-bye to the joys of
the earth, but you are strong through misfortune and can look the
truth in the face. We are both wrecks of life, and the only hope
left us is to wait and die quietly in the desert island which is our
refuge. We are undone, rent and swept away; Death has laid his hand
upon us; we are fallen and shapeless rags after having passed through
the mills of an absurd society. For this reason I love you, because
you are my equal in misfortune; elective affinity unites us. Poor Lucy
was the work-girl enfeebled by sweating, weakened from her birth by
poverty. You were the girl of the people drawn from her home by the
attraction of the well-being of the privileged; seduced, not by love,
but by the caprices of the happy; the girl offered as a sacrifice to
the Minotaur whose remains were afterwards thrown on to the dunghill.
I love you, Sagrario; we are two fugitives from society, whose paths
must join; I am hated as dangerous, you are despised as an outcast;
misfortune has laid hold on us. Our bodies are weakened and we bear
the wounds of the conquered, but before death claims us, let us make
our lives sweet by love. Let us seek for roses as did poor Lucy."
He pressed the young woman's hands, who, bewildered by Gabriel's
words, knew not what to say, and wept softly. Upstairs, in the upper
storey of the Claverias, the Chapel-master played his harmonium.
Gabriel knew the music: it was Beethoven's last lament, the "Must it
be," that the great genius sang before his death with a melancholy
that made one shiver.
"I love you, Sagrario," continued Gabriel, "ever since I saw you
return to this house, bravely facing the odious curiosity of the
people around. I have spent weeks and months by the side of your
machine, seeing how industriously you worked. I have studied you and
read you. You are a sincere and simple creature; your mind has none
of the doublings and hidden corners of those complicated and tortuous
souls used to the artifices of civilisation. I guessed day by day, by
your gentle glance and the attention with which you listened to me,
your gratitude for the little I was able to do for you. I remembered
the dark period of your life, your slavery to the flesh; and finding
me always gentle with you, protecting you from your father's anger,
your gratitude has grown and grown, till to-day you love me, Sagrario.
You yourself have not realised it, you know not how to explain it, but
your being responds to mine like those chemical substances I spoke of.
That single and eternal love is a lying invention of the poets, of
which facts often make a mockery. One can love several people with
equal warmth: the indispensable thing is the affinity. You who
formerly loved a man to madness, what do you feel for me? Have I
deceived myself? You really love me?"
Sagrario continued weeping, with her head bent, as though she did
not dare to look at Luna. He reassured her gently: she must call
him Gabriel, speak to him as "thou." Were they not companions in
misfortune?
"I am ashamed," murmured the young woman. "So much happiness disturbs
me. Yes, I like you. No, I love you, Gabriel. I would never have
confessed it; I would have died sooner than reveal my secret. What am
I that anyone should love me? For many days I have not looked in the
glass, for I should weep at the remembrance of my lost youth. And
then my story--my terrible story. How could I imagine that you--or, I
should say, that thou, wouldst read my thoughts so clearly? See how
I tremble; the shock has not yet ceased, the surprise of finding my
secret discovered. A man like you to descend to me, ugly and sick for
ever. No, do not speak of the other man; I forgot him long ago. And am
I going to remember him now that you give me the charity of your love?
No, Gabriel, you are the greatest and best of men; you are like a god
to me."
They remained silent a long while with their hands clasped, looking
into the darkness of the murmuring garden. From above still sounded
the lament of the genius at his fading life.
Sagrario leant on Gabriel as though her strength were failing, and as
if terrified at so much happiness, she wished to take refuge in his
arms.
"Why have I known you so late!" she said in a low voice. "I should
have wished to love you in my youth, to be beautiful and healthy only
for you, to have the beauty and charm of a great lady to soften the
rest of your life. But my gratitude can offer you little, nothing but
ill-health; the seeds of death are in me, and slowly I shall fade
away. Gabriel, why did you set your heart on me?"
"Because you are an invalid, and unfortunate as I am. Our misery is
the loving affinity. Besides, I have never loved like most men. In my
travels I have seen the most beautiful women in the world without the
slightest glow of desire. I am not of an amorous temperament. From my
adventures in Paris when I was young I always returned with a feeling
of disgust. My love for the unfortunate has mastered me to the point
of blunting my feelings. I am like a drunkard or a gambler, who,
obsessed by their passion, feel nothing before a woman. A studious
man, buried in his books, feels very little the calls of sex. My
passion is pity for the disinherited, and hatred of injustice
and inequality. It has so entirely absorbed me, enslaving all my
faculties, that I have never had time to think of love. The female
does not attract me, but I worship a woman when I see her sad and
unfortunate. Ugliness makes more impression on me than beauty, because
it speaks to me of social infamies, it shows me the bitterness of
injustice, it is the only wine which revives my strength. I loved Lucy
because she was unfortunate and dying. I love you, Sagrario, because
in your early youth you were a wanderer in life, one whom no one would
love. My love is for you, to brighten what remains to you of life."
Sagrario leant on Gabriel's breast.
"How good you are!" she sighed; "what a beautiful soul!"
"Yours is the same, poor Sagrario. Your life has been a snare. You
sold yourself through hunger and despair as do thousands of others;
you thought to find bread in the false pretences of love. Everything
is for the privileged of this world: the arms of the father, the sex
of the daughter, and when those arms are weakened, or the youthful
body loses its charms, they are thrown on one side and replaced. The
market is abundant; I love you for your misfortunes. Had I seen you
young and beautiful as in former times, I should not have felt the
slightest attraction. Beauty is a bar to sentiment. The Sagrario of
former times, with her dreams of being a great lady flattered by the
words of youthful lovers, brightly dressed like brilliant birds, would
never have thought of a vagabond aged by misery, ugly and sick. We
understand each other because we are unfortunate; misery allows us to
see into each other's souls; in full happiness we should never have
met."
"It is true," she murmured, leaning her head on Gabriel's shoulder. "I
love that misery which has allowed us to know, each other."
"You will be my companion," continued Luna, in a soft tone. "We will
pass our lives together till death breaks the chain. I will protect
you, although the protection of a sick and persecuted man is not worth
much."
He passed his arm round the woman, raising her head with his other
hand, fixing his eyes on those of Sagrario, which were shining in the
starlight bright with tears.
"We shall be two souls, two minds who cherish one another without
giving rein to passion, and with a purity such as no poets have
imagined. This night in which we have mutually confessed one to
another, in which our souls have been laid open to one another is our
wedding night; kiss me, companion of my life!"
And in the silence of the cloister they kissed each other noiselessly,
slowly, as though with their lips joined they were weeping over the
misery of their past, and the brevity of a love around which death was
circling. Above, the lament of Beethoven went on unfolding its sad
modulations, which floated through the cloister and round the sleeping
Cathedral.
Gabriel stood erect sustaining Sagrario, who seemed almost fainting
from the strength of her feelings; he looked up at the luminous space
with almost priestly gravity, and said, whispering close to the young
woman's ear:
"Our life will be like a deserted garden, where amid fallen trunks and
dead branches fresh foliage springs up. Companion, let us love one
another. Above our misery as pariahs let spring arise. It will be a
sad spring, without fruit, but it will have flowers. The sun shines
for those who are in the open, but for us, dear companion, it is very
far. But from the black depths of our well we will clasp each other,
raising our heads, and though his heat will not revive us, we will
adore him like a distant star."